A phased array antenna technique has been widely used in the field of wireless communication and radar, and may be applied to a transmission device to form beam directionality and electronic scanning of a beam. For example, in the field of wireless communication, it is possible to enlarge a range of communication area by forming a beam and enhancing an antenna gain, or to dynamically control a coverage area according to the number of users controlled in a base station. Further, in the application to radar, by radiating a beam of sharp directionality formed by a phased array antenna to a detection object from a transmission device, it is possible to suppress reflection (clutter reflection) from a non-detection target, to thereby enhance the detection accuracy.
An array antenna transmission device disclosed in Patent Literature 1 is a transmission device that uses a phased array antenna technique, in which a plurality of antenna elements is arranged in an array form. In this transmission device, by appropriately controlling the phase and amplitude of each of a plurality of parallel transmission systems (hereinafter, referred to as “transmission branches”) that supplies electricity to the respective antenna elements, it is possible to obtain a desired directionality gain as an antenna.
In wireless communication using a phased array antenna, the related art example disclosed in Patent Literature 1 is used, for example, as a technique that corrects a phase error and an amplitude error. The array antenna transmission and reception device in Patent Literature 1 has a configuration in which RF transmitters are provided to respectively supply electricity to the plurality of antennas to form a beam, in which RF receivers for calibration that detect amplitude and phase errors of respective transmission branches, a fast Fourier transformer and a calibration value measuring section are separately provided. In order to realize error correction, transmission signals of the respective transmission branches extracted by a changeover switch are sequentially received and processed to calculate a calibration value for correction of error detection and correction. Further, the transmission signals are fed back to the respective transmission branches based on the calculated calibration value to correct the phase error and the amplitude error.